Excited for Galaxy Note 3 announcement tomorrow...

[CZroe]

I'm strongly considering trading this iPhone 5 with my older brother for his Note II and then using that until I find a good deal on a T-Mobile Note 3.

 

[Zaap]

I'm strongly considering trading this iPhone 5 with my older brother for his Note II

Heh! He's actually up for a downgrade of that magnitude?

 

[CZroe]

Heh! He's actually up for a downgrade of that magnitude?

I don't think he ever wanted that much phone. It seriously is too much for him. He's scared to sign up for a Google account or turn on any of the phone's cool services or features because everything uses location data and stuff that he doesn't want to enable. With an i5 he could lower his bill (currently unlimited text/talk) and get by with iMessage and FaceTime, since that's what his long-time girlfriend uses anyway. He wanted to return it within his 15 days or something but got stuck doing an emergency roof repair or something.

 

[Phobic9]

I picked up the G2 last night and it's way too small. I'll be taking this thing back on Friday, grabbing a Note 3 and selling my Note 2 shortly after. That was a short-lived experiment.

Have any pre-orders from AT&T shipped yet?

 

[Red Storm]

One more day! :awe:

 

[shortylickens]

*fap* *fap* *fap* *fap* *fap*

 

[Chiropteran]

He's scared to sign up for a Google account or turn on any of the phone's cool services or features because everything uses location data and stuff that he doesn't want to enable.

Does he think that the iPhone doesn't keep location data?

 

[Red Storm]

AT review is up:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7376/samsung-galaxy-note-3-review

 

[Phynaz]

Samsung cheating big time at benchmarking.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...rking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/

 

[Red Storm]

According to Anand it's not limited to just Samsung, a lot of OEMs are doing it too. I think it's a low move, just like the benchmark optimization days of Nvidia and ATI, but frankly at the end of the day I could care less. I don't buy phones based on benchmarks.

 

[Phynaz]

I will not financially support a company that purposefully tries to dupe consumers. It's an ethics call on my part.

 

[dawheat]

What Samsung did with the S4 in boosting the GPU speed past 100% was absolutely wrong and they got dinged for it.

In this case, and it's still somewhat unclear, is that Samsung is making sure its hardware runs at 100% in benchmarks. But shouldn't a properly configured benchmark program do this? Otherwise what's the point of using it for comparison purposes if it isn't running all devices at their full potential? What if different device hardware runs the benchmark at different degrees of potential?

<edit> If Samsung is doing more than running stuff at 100% and doing other shenanigans, then yes, they're clearly in the wrong </edit>

 

[thedosbox]

Samsung cheating big time at benchmarking.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...rking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/

Whats particularly hilarious is that despite the cheating on benchmarks, the gallery took anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes to open. But of course, nobody provides pretty graphs for gallery performance, so who cares?

 

[dawheat]

I will not financially support a company that purposefully tries to dupe consumers. It's an ethics call on my part.

I hope you don't support Intel or AMD as well - the stuff they've done with benchmarks over the years would make any smartphone manufacturer blush.

 

[thedosbox]

Worth pointing out that the above arstechnica link was just for the benchmark issue. The full review highlights a few other concerns such as potential USB3 RF interference: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...-big-and-it-pulls-some-benchmark-shenanigans/

 

[Phynaz]

I hope you don't support Intel or AMD as well - the stuff they've done with benchmarks over the years would make any smartphone manufacturer blush.

I support very few companies. One is where I'm employed, for obvious reasons.

 

[dawheat]

Whats particularly hilarious is that despite the cheating on benchmarks, the gallery took anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes to open. But of course, nobody provides pretty graphs for gallery performance, so who cares?

To be fair - that's a pure software issue as the review did state there was basically no load on the CPU or disk. I've noticed this on pretty much every Samsung phone where I accidentally brought up the stock gallery. Thankfully I don't use the stock gallery and app galleries do pop up quick.

It's certainly not a perfect phone, but still the phone I'm buying after playing around with in-store (came down to the G2 or Note 3). It's a large screen in a still portable package, very good display quality in movie mode, fast (regardless of boosting or not), the issues like stock gallery don't affect me, I use the pen regularly at work, 32GB + 64GB SD is a nice plus, and battery life is very good.

I don't want to make excuses for the phone - if metal/glass build is very important to you, or if stock Android is important to you, or top of the line camera is important to you, then this isn't the phone for you.

I'm a phablet user who wants a device I can carry 24/7 (which excludes the Z Ultra), gets all day battery life (Note 2 was barely enough), and in the first 5 minutes I own a phone, I remove all the default apps and widgets, install Nova Prime, disable most motion gestures (though I will keep the air gestures and of course the s-pen features), and push all the apps I want to install from the Play Store on my desktop browser.

 

[dawheat]

http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note3_ShootOut_1.htm

Display seems pretty impressive and maches my in-store experience. However a couple things:

- Brighter than the Note 2 across the board which was one of my biggest negatives about my Note2
- In movie mode, the colors and whites looked pretty good, even side by side my Nexus 4.
- I like this superbright feature of Automatic brightness, but I expect the phone will scale it down after a few minutes. Also I hope 3rd party auto-brightness apps can take advantage of it (I use Lux Dash) as I don't like the default calibration.

 

[Red Storm]

I'm a phablet user who wants a device I can carry 24/7 (which excludes the Z Ultra), gets all day battery life (Note 2 was barely enough), and in the first 5 minutes I own a phone, I remove all the default apps and widgets, install Nova Prime, disable most motion gestures (though I will keep the air gestures and of course the s-pen features), and push all the apps I want to install from the Play Store on my desktop browser.

Same. As far as I'm concerned the Note 3 isn't just Samsung's flagship, it is the Android flagship. No other phone has it all.

 

[Eug]

Samsung cheating big time at benchmarking.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...rking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/

Heh. When it happened for the S4, I thought to myself they've learned their lesson and they'll never try something that lame again. Well, apparently I was wrong.

 

[WelshBloke]

Samsung cheating big time at benchmarking.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013...rking-adjustments-inflate-scores-by-up-to-20/

Ive said for ages that smartphone benchmarks arent worth squat.

We've been struggling with how to deal with this one for a little while now. Unfortunately this optimization is far more widespread among Android OEMs and not limited to Samsung or the Galaxy Note 3. We hinted at it in our original international SGS4 investigation and tried to get other OEMs to stop back then as well but with little success

 

[Eug]

Ive said for ages that smartphone benchmarks arent worth squat.

I think this Gallery opening benchmark is rather important:

http://bcove.me/e41lnia4

 

[ControlD]

I think this Gallery opening benchmark is rather important:

http://bcove.me/e41lnia4

That does seem disturbing, especially since the gallery opens almost instantly on the Note 2. I have to assume there is a software problem somewhere with the version of Gallery Samsung is shipping with the phone.

 

[WelshBloke]

I think this Gallery opening benchmark is rather important:

http://bcove.me/e41lnia4

What's that got to do with benchmarks?

The Samsung gallery app is a little slow sometimes. Mine takes a few (5 or so ) seconds to load up but its loading something like 8000 photos and thumbnails.

Theres obviously some sort of software problem going on there but I dont see how its got anything to do with the quoted issue.

You can also just use a different gallery app.

 

[Eug]

What's that got to do with benchmarks?

Gallery opening is a benchmark. It's not Geekbench, but it does indicate the performance of the phone for that action...

...which for some strange reason is shockingly abysmal. Samsung has some significant work to do.

And arguably, it is actually more important a benchmark than others, because people actually want to use the Gallery app.